The Priority of Mind

A thorough justification of the view that mind, not matter, is the fundamental reality. Is the mind just a by-product of the brain? Or is mind the fundamental reality, which creates matter? In The Priority of Mind, Keith Ward mounts a definitive defence of mind as prior to matter. In an accessible style, he unpacks the sources and abilities of the mind, situates it in the wider world, or cosmos, and proposes a relation between mind and virtue, and the nature of mind after death. Along the way, he explores the different philosophical approaches to the mind-matter question taken by thinkers over time, settling on idealism as the teaching of most classical philosophers, and as most consistent with modern science. Lay readers and scholars alike will relish Ward's clear, methodical exposition, and his counterarguments against the materialist narrative that dominates much of popular philosophical thinking today.